Boulder's snow removal under scrutiny

Alison Richards, of Boulder, walks across the snowpacked road at the intersection of Fifth and Marine streets Monday. City Councilman Macon Cowles says Boulder needs to do more to clear streets and sidewalks, especially if it wants people to walk and ride their bikes.
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JEREMY PAPASSO
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The more than 6 inches of snow that fell on Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning was followed by a week of mostly below-freezing temperatures.

That left some Boulder streets -- especially those on steep slopes or well shaded by evergreen trees -- icy days after the snow and has renewed the debate over whether the city should do more to remove snow and ice from residential streets.

On Monday, Councilman Macon Cowles sent an email to other city officials asking what more could be done.

"I would like to know if we have considered plowing streets that exceed a certain grade," Cowles wrote. "It would be helpful to map the steep streets in our town, and then review the ice and snow plan with respect to those streets. I am impressed again this year with the fact that it has been hard not to slip and fall when visiting certain areas of town after our recent snowfall."

City public works officials are in the middle of an analysis of Boulder's snow removal performance. That analysis includes everything from which chemicals it uses to prevent freezing and how they're applied to how the staff is organized in advance of storms.

Felix Gallo, the city's transportation and utilities maintenance coordinator, said crews already try to pre-treat streets that are known to be problems with deicing chemicals and make at least one pass with the plow.

However, as part of the analysis, which will be presented to the City Council early this year, the public works department will include discussion of "enhanced" snow removal efforts that more consistently hit those known problem streets, mostly the steeper streets in Chautauqua, University Hill and Mapleton Hill, where large conifer trees block the sun for most of the day.

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Gallo said he could not provide a cost estimate for the additional service. Rather, if the City Council was interested, the public works department would have to do that additional snow removal for several years and develop annual estimates.

Gallo said Boulder's current practices are in line with most Colorado cities, which only plow major streets and let the sun take care of the rest.

"We're doing what everyone else is doing," he said. "That's not saying we couldn't do better."

In an interview, Cowles said the city needs to do more to clear streets and sidewalks, especially if it wants people to walk and ride their bikes.

"Our job in the city and on the City Council is to express the priorities of the citizens and then implement those," he said. "We need to keep the ordinary functions of people's daily lives working as smoothly as possible, and I think we have room for improvement in snow and ice removal."

Councilman Ken Wilson, who lives on University Hill, said most people would like more snow removal, but not necessarily at the expense of other city services. For his part, he'd rather see more police officers and support staff hired than more plowing of residential streets.

"I think snow plowing comes up pretty high on things the community wants, but it should be included in next year's budget discussion," he said.

Jim Knopf, a landscape architect who has lived on the slope above the federal labs on South Broadway since 1982, said city service has improved but is still inconsistent. There have been times when neighbors have gone without garbage pickup and mail service because the streets are so slick.

There are a few streets in the neighborhood that are so slick no one can even walk on them, and paths that children use to get to school and commuters use to get to work often aren't plowed, Knopf said.

Knopf said he'd like the city to keep better track of problem areas so that new plow drivers know about them. He also thinks the city should consider smaller snow-clearing equipment that could maneuver in narrower residential streets, perhaps at lower cost than the larger plows.

Knopf said he usually rides his bike, but after snowstorms, he doesn't know what the access will be like.

"I use a bicycle practically every day, and it's been a week and it's still not clear," Knopf said. "They'd get a lot of people out of their cars if they cleared it."

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